Why do we expect previous success to lead to future success?
What is the Hot Hand Fallacy?
The hot hand fallacy is the tendency to believe that someone who has been successful in a task or activity is more likely to be successful again in further attempts. The hot hand fallacy derives from the saying that athletes have “hot hands” when they repeatedly score, causing people to believe that they are on a streak and will continue to have successful outcomes.
Where this bias occurs
Imagine you are watching a hockey game, and a goalie makes five saves in the opening few minutes. We predict that the goalie will continue making saves because they are on a “hot streak.”
We base our prediction on a small run of random events without considering that the goalie’s first five saves could have been chance. We assume they are on a streak because we mistakenly believe that a short pattern is representative of a larger sample. The hot hand fallacy leads us to take a small pool of data—the opening minutes of one game—as a better indicator of future performance than an average save percentage calculated from seasons’ worth of data.
